Melanie Dugan, author of Dead Beautiful, on tour May/June 2012

About Dead Beautiful

Dead Beautiful is a contemporary retelling of the classic Greek myth of Persephone. This was the myth the Greeks used to explain how we came to have the change of seasons. In the traditional version of the myth, Persephone – the daughter of Demeter, Goddess of agriculture and fertility, and Zeus, the top god on Olympus – is abducted one day by Hades, God of the Underworld (which is also called Hades).

Demeter refuses to do her job until her daughter is returned to her, and the earth is plunged into the first winter: no crops grow, cold settles on the earth. It turns out that while in Hades, Persephone has eaten six pomegranate seeds. As a result, for six months of the year, she must live with Hades; this is when it is fall and winter on earth. For six months she lives with her mother – then we have spring and summer.

Dead Beautiful asks, what if Persephone, like many adolescent girls, didn’t tell her mother the whole truth? What if Hades didn’t abduct her? What if she made the decision to go with him? (She is, after all, 18 millennia old.)

The result is a novel that examines the complex dynamics between mothers and daughters, and explores the challenges faced by young women as they move from childhood into adulthood and independence. It is smart, fast-paced, funny and profound; a book that will appeal to women young and old, to mothers and daughters.

About Melanie Dugan

Melanie Dugan was born in San Francisco, California and now lives with her family in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of two previous novels, Sometime Daughter (“a stunning debut,” Kingston Whig-Standard) and Revising Romance (“heartwarming, amusing and … downright sexy,” Midwest Book Review). She is all books, all the time: She has worked in several library systems and currently works in her hometown library, she has worked at a bookstore, and was Associate Publisher at Quarry Press, a small press in Kingston. She has also worked as a journalist and in that capacity has written many book reviews. Her short stories have been shortlisted for several awards.

Visit Melanie at her website.